The Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) was a space telescope for infrared light designed and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), in cooperation with ISAS (part of JAXA as of 2003) and NASA. The ISO was designed to study infrared light at wavelengths of 2.5 to 240 micrometres.
The Euro 480.1 million ISO was launched on 17 November 1995 from the ELA-2 launch pad at the Guiana Space Centre near Kourou in French Guiana. The launch vehicle, an Ariane 44P rocket, placed ISO successfully into a highly elliptical geocentric orbit, completing one revolution around the Earth every 24 hours. The primary mirror of its Ritchey-Chrétien telescope measured 60 cm in diameter and was cooled to 1.7 Kelvin by means of superfluid helium. The ISO satellite contained four instruments that allowed for imaging and photometry from 2.5 to 240 micrometres and spectroscopy from 2.5 to 196.8 micrometres.
Read more about Infrared Space Observatory: History and Development, The Satellite, Optical Telescope, Instruments, Launch and Operations, End of Mission, Results
Famous quotes containing the words space and/or observatory:
“If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us as long to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of facts which filled them.”
—William James (18421910)
“Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)